Pliant Technology, developer of Enterprise Flash Drives (EFDs), a new class of high-performance, high-reliability storage drives, today announced the availability of its first family of products. Pliant’s Lightning EFDs integrate an advanced software architecture and a proprietary ASIC controller design to dramatically improve performance and reliability of storage and IT systems, while significantly reducing cost, space requirements and energy consumption.

Pliant’s Lightning EFDs enable enterprise data centers, financial services organizations, high-performance computing (HPC) environments, and digital media applications to ‘do more for less,’ by providing IT managers and system architects with breakthrough levels of performance, reliability and efficiency. Lightning EFDs deliver the industry’s highest sustained performance with the most predictable performance profile across a wide range of read/write workloads, and have been specifically designed for demanding, mission-critical 24x7 applications.

Lightning EFDs are the first flash-based storage devices to feature a cache-less design to prevent data loss on power interruptions, and a number of advanced data reliability features to deliver complete end-to-end data protection. These performance and reliability features combine to make Lightning EFDs an ideal solution for write-intensive enterprise applications, unlike existing SSDs that require limiting the workload.

“Flash-based storage has the potential to impact data centers in very positive ways, but cost and reliability concerns persist among enterprise IT managers seeking to leverage SSD technology,” said Jeff Janukowicz, research manager for Solid State Drives at IDC. “SSD solutions, such as Pliant’s Lightning EFDs that can help address these concerns by delivering high reliability, efficiency and predictable performance, will help fuel the mainstream enterprise adoption of flash storage over the next few years.”

The Lightning EFD Product Family
The Lightning EFD family includes the Lightning LB and Lightning LS models. They are designed around the standard 2.5-inch (LB) and 3.5-inch (LS) form factors to integrate seamlessly into existing Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) enterprise storage and server systems, without requiring modifications to existing applications, operating systems or infrastructure.
Pliant’s Lightning EFDs feature:

“The exceptional performance and reliability features of Lightning EFDs allow IT managers to address the most significant challenges they’re facing today, namely, keeping up with continually increasing storage demands with fixed budgets, limited data center floor space and the ever growing cost of power,” said Amyl Ahola, CEO of Pliant Technology. “Our Lightning EFDs will dramatically expand the capabilities of current and future enterprise computing systems in new and innovative ways, enabling IT managers to do more with less: deliver maximum performance with less power, lower cost and a smaller footprint.”

Lightning EFD Availability
The Pliant Lightning LS300, Lightning LS150 and Lightning LB150 are being delivered for OEM evaluation and qualification, and will be available via authorized channel partners in September 2009.

The price is, as usual, the big question mark, but it does show where the technology is heading.

I think SAS is more likely... 8)

They are designed around the standard 2.5-inch (LB) and 3.5-inch (LS) form factors to integrate seamlessly into existing Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) enterprise storage and server systems, without requiring modifications to existing applications, operating systems or infrastructure.

They already say they are SAS (for enterprise) I am saying they would have to do SATA 3 for mainstream use (otherwise they would max out and be wasted (SATA 2)) or folks would need to additionally buy (expensive) SAS controllers and lose a slot.